am i the only person who likes cold soup straight from the can?

1) I DO like eating oatmeal straight out of the packet with milk, like a cold cereal

and

2) I NEVER add that extraneous can of water when heating soup up. It just makes more boring broth; what's the point of that?

This actually sounds like a great idea!

One of my favorite snacks is to eat chick peas right out of the can.

But the soup thing is just gross.

Jews can eat anything; it's just a resistance we build up after twenty years of weekly dumpling servings.

But c'mon... that cold mushroom soup is good.

but that's OK -- just like eating longpig if yer on gilligan's island!

And cold baked beans. And mushy peas. I can't think of much I won't happily eat straight from the tin.

I hate the fucking internet.

(eating navel lint -- whether or not it really is butt lint -- is still pretty nasty.)

i like how we were clowning on latebloomer for eating cold condensed soup, and yet (until much later) let slide the INFINITELY more disgusting instance of a poster eating ass-lint.

...and yet... let slide ran from the thread in stark horror when confronted with the INFINITELY more disgusting instance of a poster eating ass-lint.

fixed

When yr cooking soup and you have a little taste to see if it's hot yet, but it's still cold...

URRRGGHHH

I'm at work, trying so hard not to rofflepuke.

I live with a guy who does this with refried beans.

i really have only done this with campbell's chicken noodle, vegetable and manhattan clam chowder.

Progresso works. A must when camping.

i still heart this exchange:

Well no one would slurp condensed soup cold, at least not without adding water for god's sake. We're not animals.

-- Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:31 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link
water dilutes the flavor.

-- latebloomer: Ambassador With Training In Righteousness (latebloomer), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:33 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link
OK some of us are animals.

-- Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:33 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link
*licks paws*

-- latebloomer: Ambassador With Training In Righteousness (latebloomer), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:34 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

Took the first spoonful of "Gourmet Minute Five Mushroom Creamy Blend" soup cold at lunch today. Soup smelled and tasted OK but was unmistakeably *carbonated*, with little bubbles all the way through the "creamy blend", no matter how slowly I stirred with a spoon, and all before I'd microwaved it. This was sold from a large chain grocery store deli counter, soup packaged in a clear bag that now that I think of it was bulging when I scissored it open (didn't notice, distracted). Soup never sat out, went from grocery to fridge to office fridge without warming up, and it's well before the Best Before date of March 1. Of course I stopped eating after that first spoonful.

Now I have to wait to see if I get botulism. Could not possibly be more ironic if I do -- I'm a neurologist treats patients with migraines and dystonia with Botox injections, and I keep Botox vials in the freezer of the fridge where I kept the soup (no, there was no cross contamination).

good luck, plasmon. As you wait, you could investigate whether Clostridium botulinum metabolic activity creates residual CO2, for funsies.

is one spoonful enough to inoculate?

well this is exactly the wrong type of exciting

I'm not sure if C. botulinum is gas producing (perfringens is, as with gas gangrene), it's just not a good sign that something is producing gas in my soup. Is "for funsies" supposed to be as condescending as it comes across? I'm not really worried, just thought it was funny.

We diagnosed a woman with food borne botulism this winter. Presented with rapidly progressive ophthalmoplegia and dysphagia, got diagnosed with Miller Fischer syndrome (a variant of Guillain Barre). Later turned out she'd come home from a long bus trip to an empty kitchen on a cold Sunday night. She was a home canner and apparently opened up one of her own creations. By the time they figure it out it was too late for the antitoxin to help. Ended up completely paralysed but aware, intubated in ICU.

Did you save any of it to test?

I feel like there could be a million other reasons for the "carbonation". Sounds pretty weird though.

Yeah I saved the soup. No point testing it unless I get sick, which I don't expect. The screening diagnostic test we used for the lady in ICU was serum inoculation of mice, which die if the toxin's present.

I let the deli know what I found. I've had that same soup dozens of times before without incident, though I don't usually take the first spoonful cold. That'll teach me to play Letterpress while making lunch.

I'm not a food chemist, but I'm sure there could have been CO2 released from non-bacterial elements in the soup. Gas produced by anaerobic bacteria would stink, and this didn't.

okay don't blame your impending botulism on your need to embarrass me at word games

Just trying to level the playing field.

ice cold

I approve

Is "for funsies" supposed to be as condescending as it comes across?

You have my permission to shoot me in one of my fleshier parts. Or possibly you will accept my apology instead.

No worries. Sounds like you know something about microbiology? I've heard "bulging cans" as a sign of C.botulinum but no idea if that translates to a puffed out plastic bag of carbonated cream of mushroom.

It takes a 15 minutes of boiling to denature botulism toxin! That's longer than I thought it would take. So just quickly nuking can still be a problem.

Yeah, bacterial toxins are super hardy.

We did rounds on botulism after that recent case, found out about the deaths from carrot juice borne botulism in 2006 (http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm55d106a1.htm). This was Bolthouse carrot juice, the same thing my wife drinks (I prefer their Passion Orange Guava). Got home that night, found a huge bottle of Bolthouse carrot juice in the downstairs fridge, 2 weeks past expiry date (2 for 1 deal the last time we bought it). Botulism has nothing to do with best before dates but I dumped it anyway.

I have a prior history of food borne illness. Got the worst ever case of food poisoning from Yuki-jirushi (Snow Brand) low fat milk in 2000 when I lived in Kyoto. Turned out they had Staph Aureus in the milk plant, weren't cleaning the pipes properly (I used to work in an ice cream store, I know how hard it is to clean mild contamination off machinery). They were also taking expired milk and dumping it back into the pasteurizer. I got horribly horribly sick in the middle of judging an English speech contest in a suburban high school in Osaka. It was a huge scandal in Japan, the dairy originally tried to cover up what happened, recalled milk products only a few days later. Months later I had 2 Snow Brand guys show up at my apartment door unexpectedly, both wearing dark suits in the hot summer weather, bowing and apologizing profusely, and presenting me with a box of absolutely marvelous chocolate biscuits.

Mr. Jaq got staph poisoning from ice cream in the Bellagio a few years ago. I've never seen a sicker person, and it came on incredibly fast. Horrible stuff.